The words 'amateur' and 'dilettante' have become pejorative. I am not, nor ever have been, an 'expert', and I will not write merely for the benefit of experts. I believe that a person-to-person approach is more likely to be appreciated by those for whom I write, than a strictly academic one. Those of my readers who are already familiar with my work will know that I write in a conversational style. To avoid confusion, I ask my readers to refer constantly to this appendix because all of these reassessments, and all of this fresh thought have appeared in my Records of the Medieval Sword (Boydell Press, 1991). Any publication of archaeological research must always be subject to the possibility of new evidence calling for a change of mind, and for any true scholar this must demand an admission of error. Further finds and more study will inevitably bring about the need for yet further amendments. My publishers and I have decided not to amend the actual text, but rather to add an appendix wherein these errors are corrected. Since then, thirty more years of thought based upon many significant archaeological finds have exposed these errors. This book, having been prepared and published in the early 1960s, contains many errors in the matter of the dating of swords. Printed in Great Britain by Athensum Press, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear This publication is printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-5438

Oakeshott, Ewart Sword in the Age of Chivalry.-New ed1. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126, USAīritish Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. Reissued 1994 The Boydell Press, WoodbridgeReprinted 1995 Reprinted in paperback 1998

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The age of chivalry